If you asked any European pilot if there is
currently a pilot shortage, most of them would probably laugh.

Few pilots in Europe would be willing to agree
with media headlines about the ‘looming pilot shortage’. Then how come we are
always hearing about the hundreds of thousands of pilots that are needed over
the next decades? Why has the ‘pilot shortage looming on the horizon’ for so
many years, never materialised?

The answer is simple and staring us in the
face: There is no pilot shortage.

To date in Europe, there is no evidence for a
deficit in pilot numbers. ECA estimates that in various European Member States
there is a large pool of pilots - or rather license holders - who are either
unemployed or unable to find a flying job that provides a reasonable lifestyle.
Figures from our national pilot associations indicate approximately an average
15% unemployment rate among pilots in Europe. The lack of data from national
Civil Aviation Authorities, EASA and Member States makes it difficult to keep
track of the total number of European licence holders vs actively flying pilots.

Pilot supply exceeds the number of pilot
jobs needing to be filled, has done for decades, and shows no sign of
restriction in the foreseeable future.

In fact, there are thousands of European
pilots who have gone abroad as ‘expats’ to find acceptable terms and conditions.
There are thousands of license holders who complete basic training, but then
look at starting conditions in airlines and conclude they are better off in
another job or sector. There are thousands of pilots being worked to limit of
fatigue rules who do not return to flying following a burnout or parental leave.

There are large numbers of available
licensed pilots who are deterred from filling available positions, and they are
ready to be recruited by any operator wishing to actively do so - under the
right conditions.

The ‘pilot shortage’ debate is an
oversimplified way to brand the ‘coverup’ of many structural problems in the
industry. What may be perceived - or portrayed - by some of the industry as a
‘pilot shortage’ is in fact part of a complex discussion on accessing pilot
supply, including by weakening regulation to unlock pilot supply for certain
airlines at lower cost, and more profitable for some training organisations.

The terms ‘pilot shortage’ and ‘pilot
supply’ are often used as a euphemism - a wrapper for a package of wishes to
weaken regulation on licensing, training and workload. All this in order to make
the access and use of the pilot supply cheaper for airlines, at the further
expense of professional standards.

Entry requirements to the profession

One of the main issues that affects pilot
supply is the entry requirements to the profession.

Where in the past airlines selected candidates
for aptitude and then financed or co-financed the ab-initio training to provide
themselves with highly qualified and motivated people, today’s aspirant airline
pilots mostly self-finance their training. Initial aptitude testing is very
often left to the training organisations.

Here a business case issue arises: many pilot
training organisations have a vested interest in allowing young aspiring pilots
to enrol on their training courses. Whether the candidate has got the necessary
skills for becoming a pilot is often not high on their list of concerns. What
some training organisations are interested in is simply training as many pilots
as possible. Did you know that every pilot trained generates between 100.000 and
120.000 Euros gross for the country’s economy?2 Thanks to their attractive
marketing pitch - selling the childhood dream of flying and ‘glamourous
lifestyle’ once associated with the pilot job - it is not surprising that
training schools churn out pilots at an unprecedented rate.

But this also means that in practice today the
main entry requirement is the ability of the candidate to pay the (high) cost of
the training school (approx. 100.000 Euros), and not the right skills, attitude,
and profile.

The full capacity of training
organisations to train licensed pilots exceeds by far any foreseeable need by
operators in the industry.

The fact that many aspiring pilots do not pass
the selection of traditional operators and are then forced to self-finance an
additional type rating (or even give up their aim of becoming a professional
pilot) is an indication that the current approach of the industry to pilot
training and hiring is flawed. To prevent this, the operators should be much
more involved (as historically) at the initial stages of entry into the
profession by actively selecting the right candidates BEFORE the training
commences.

Another direct consequence of this flawed
approach is the industry already noticing that they do not attract anymore the
right talent for the profession. Beyond the typical male, middle-class
candidate, able to finance the training, very few people from other social or
ethnic backgrounds enter the profession. Less than 5% of Europe’s pilots are
female, which also serves to illustrates that the issue of making the ‘cockpit
profession’ more attractive for women has yet to be addressed properly.

If aviation wants to attract talented people
with the right profiles it needs to tap into a different pool of candidates.
This also means opening new possibilities for relieving the financial burden of
the training by either sponsoring, co-financing or assisting in favourable loan
conditions and providing bank guarantees to the aspiring pilots.

Paying the training costs of new desired
pilots and a modest wage when in training - as for example demonstrated by Air
France - would undoubtedly provide as many new, highly skilled pilots as an air
operator could ever need.

Pilot training is still rooted in the mid-20th century

Pilot training is still, to this day, rooted
firmly in the 20th century. Although the tools to train have been modernised
(e.g. use of simulators), the general philosophy behind the syllabus has not
changed since it was developed to train fighter pilots in World War II.

Pilots are still trained to proficiency to
perform a predetermined program. While this may not help to make pilot training
an exciting avenue for youngsters, it also does not prepare the trainees for the
many challenges in an operational airline environment.

Pilot training must move to a competency-based
concept where the skills - whether manual, intellectual or managerial - are
sharpened and perfected to enable the candidate to adapt quickly and comfortably
to the operational environment. For this, basic flying skills and understanding
of the physical environment of flying must be at the core of the training
concept, to provide real-life exposure that even the best simulators cannot
replicate. In addition, it must provide the prospective airline pilot with a
real “education” that encompasses management, economic, leadership and people
skills – well beyond what is taught today in an ATP syllabus, both from an
academic and practical hands-on view.

These syllabi must be taught using modern
teaching techniques that appeal to a new generation of candidates and keep the
airline pilot training both challenging and exciting.

It must be also noted that many of the changes
that have been made to pilot training, over recent years, have been at the
initiative of both air operators and training organisations primarily to reduce
both time and cost for them, not to improve quality. This trend must stop, and
any alleged ‘pilot shortage’ claims must not be used to further weaken European
safety regulations on pilot training, flight time limitations for instructors or
examiners, or other relevant legislation.

The pilot training syllabus must be
brought into the 21st century, by moving it to a competency-based concept, by
putting basic flying skills (back) to the centre and providing pilots with a
real ‘education’ that encompasses management, economic, leadership and people
skills.

Any alleged ‘pilot shortage’ claims must
not be used to weaken European regulations on pilot training, flight time
limitations for instructors or examiners, or other relevant safety legislation.

The pilot career has lost its shine - Atypical
employment as entry barrier

The former luster of the pilot profession is
no longer enough to compete with the many new, alternative and attractive
digital & new technology related jobs, more appealing to the millennial
generation. But restoring the “glamorous pilot job image” might actually not be
necessary. What could attract and motivate young people to the profession is
the security of the career and attractive employment conditions.

Currently, atypical employment is on the rise
in European aviation. Many legacy airlines have not hired for years. Certain
low-cost airlines have championed the model of ‘contractor’ and ‘self-employed’
pilots - often working on zero-hours contracts - fed by the large number of
unemployed license holders with few flight hours in their log books.

Making terms and conditions competitive enough
- and offering direct open-ended employment contracts governed by local law
where crews are based (instead of precarious atypical forms of employment, based
on the laws of a foreign country) - would also contribute to attracting back the
thousands of European licence holders who have sought better conditions abroad
in Asia or in the Gulf States.

To attract female pilots, airline managers
need to think about significantly improving the availability of predictable,
family friendly, flexible and part time working (rostering) patterns. This could
help prevent the approximately 10% of female pilots who join the profession from
being unable to return to flying after starting a family, such that less than 5%
of pilots are female in more senior positions. It is detrimental to this
development that currently certain low-cost operators in Europe just stop
employing female pilots as soon as they become pregnant.

Working conditions, burnout, and lack of
family friendly or controllable working patterns mean that thousands of
available pilots are lost either through attrition - in particular a deleterious
effect on women in the profession - or are forced to seek better jobs in other
sectors or outside Europe.

Offering direct open-ended employment
contracts governed by the local law where crews are based - instead of
precarious atypical forms of employment, based on the laws of a foreign country
- would also do a lot to attract back the thousands of European license holders.

The origins of the ‘pilot shortage’ myth

Some data sources allow for forecasting of
pilot shortage in different regions of the world, with the lead of Asia. These
are the outlooks published regularly by aircraft manufacturers. For example, the
Boeing’s Pilot Outlook forecast advertises growing airline fleets and hence
growing demand for pilots worldwide, which it justifies with the current and
future aircraft orders (for retiring fleets and growing airlines and regions).

“The Boeing Pilot Outlook predicts a need
for 106,000 new pilots between 2017 and 2036 in Europe alone. Worldwide, the
demand for new pilots will be an astounding 637,000 during the same period.”(Source: Boeing).

The 2nd source predicting a pilot shortage are
the training organisations, such as CAE.

“The worldwide commercial aviation industry
will need an extra 255,000 pilots by 2027 to sustain its rapid growth and is not
moving fast enough to fill the positions, according to a 10-year forecast
published by training company CAE Inc.”(Source: Reuters).

While such data might be accurate from the
training organisation’s commercial or company point of view, it does not address
the issue of the presently ‘ready to fly’ pilots and how to ensure they fit in
some of those new employment slots. Nor does it say how to select the right
candidates and to train the crews to make sure they are ready to fly these soon
to be delivered, modern, highly automated aircraft of the future.

Manufactures, instead of only ‘making the
optimistic forecasts’, should join the debate on the ‘pilot of the future’.

“If some airlines are short of pilots, it is
due to their failure to offer adequate compensation, not because of a lack of
qualified pilots. FAA statistics clearly show there are more than twice as many
qualified pilots looking for jobs as there are job openings, with more than
25,000 new Airline Transport Pilot certificates issued during the past three and
one-half years alone. Airlines and their lobbyists pushing for changes to these
laws want to be able to hire less-experienced pilots to lower costs. Put simply,
this path would trade proven safety enhancements for profits.”

“There’s a shortage of pilots worldwide, but
it’s a little bit more complicated than that,” he says. “In America, where most
of the world’s aviation still takes place, the pilots are getting older. To say
there’s a world’s shortage of pilots, it’s probably more of an American issue
that a European issue right now.”

“Contrary to false claims of pilot shortages,
Ryanair has in recent weeks seen a big surge in pilot applications from Gulf
carriers and in Germany and Italy where both Air Berlin and Alitalia are in
bankruptcy and hundreds of their pilots are facing job losses or steep cuts in
their pay and conditions.”